


Florence, 2020 (Continued)

by In_agony_and_ecstasy



Series: Present Day Florence [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Art, Art History, Blow Jobs, Canon Muslim Character, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Flashbacks, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Italy, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Religion, Religious Guilt, Reminiscing, Smut, Top!Joe, bottom!Nicky, canon Catholic character, canonverse, posing, praying, the renaissance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:01:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26043154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_agony_and_ecstasy/pseuds/In_agony_and_ecstasy
Summary: Joe and Nicky retreat to a bedroom they share in their Florence safehouse. Joe confesses to Nicky that he'd like Nicky to pose for him, which he hasn't done in a while. Nicky agrees, and while posing, daydreams about the early days with Joe, when their romance was still blossoming.(You don’t need to read the first part of this series to understand the second)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Present Day Florence [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883686
Comments: 25
Kudos: 179





	Florence, 2020 (Continued)

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, please let me know if my portrayal of either religion is either inaccurate or offensive. I'll gladly edit or delete as necessary. 
> 
> Also, I took a bit of a dig at fan artists who like to draw Nicky without Luca Marinelli's nose or mole. Because Luca is beautiful and doesn't need to be changed.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

Later that night, after Andy returned, Nile washed the dishes, and Joe finished Isha, we all retreated to various rooms in the safe house before bed. I stood in front of the sink brushing my teeth, which never failed to remind me that toothpaste was in my top five favorite inventions since I was born. There was a knock at the bathroom door, and Joe stepped in without waiting for a response. It was courtesy, more than anything to knock before entering. I had never locked him out of a room I was in before, and he had never invaded my privacy before. Which would be difficult for him to do anyways, given how long we’d been together. I wasn’t sure I had any privacy that didn’t also belong to him. 

He wrapped his arms around my waist from behind as I leaned over to spit in the sink and splash my face with water. When I stood straight up again, he pressed his lips against the nape of my neck and hummed. I rested my head back on his shoulder while turning the faucet off. 

“Nile is currently on her phone, examining zoomed-in pictures of the Sistine, looking for your face.”

I snorted. “Why? She won’t find anything.”

“She seems to think I can’t be as familiar with the ceiling as the internet is,” he said, and then he huffed out a laugh. “To her credit, she showed me some of the pictures she was looking at online and it’s like standing on the scaffolding myself. Never seen them up that close before.” 

“You think he might have painted me anyway?” I asked, holding in my groan. 

“Well, he did like to sneak people he knew into his work,” he said, “Remember Biagio?”

“The one he made the devil in the Last Judgement for telling Julius the ceiling belonged in a tavern?” 

“That’s the one,” Joe said. I laughed against Joe and I could feel his smile on my shoulder.

I looked at Joe’s reflection in the mirror above the sink. His eyes glinted back at me. 

“Maybe he did include me then,” I said, “He could not create a face from his imagination for anything. Spent too much of his life looking at men from the neck down, I think.”

Joe laughed as he spun me around in his arms. Carelessly, I draped my wrists on his shoulders. 

“ _He certainly couldn’t create one as beautiful as yours, my heart._ ” 

He kissed me before I could protest, and even as I pulled away, he pulled me back in, kissing me until I forgot whatever unimportant thing I’d been about to say. Sometimes I wondered how I ever stopped kissing him.

When we did part, he was biting his lip, smiling. I smiled back, but not for the same reason. I smiled because he had not seemed this happy since before being captured and taken to Merrick’s lab. He was starting to feel like my Yusuf again, drawing and writing all the time. Smiling, and always trying to get his hands on me when we managed to snatch a moment of alone time.

“You know,” I started, “You should hope he _didn’t_ paint me.” 

He looked amused. “And why’s that? Why shouldn’t I want your image preserved for everyone to see for the rest of time?”

I shrugged, and laced my fingers behind his neck. “Because it wouldn’t actually be my image.” 

Joe’s brows furrowed, suddenly so severe I had to hold back my laughter by pressing my lips together. 

“What do you mean?” he asked. 

“He would have just made me more muscular, _ya hayati_.”

“No,” Joe said, like he didn’t want to believe it. 

“He would have given me abs.”

“Stop.” 

“And this,” I said, placing my finger on the bridge of my nose. “Half the size.” 

“Nico, _stop_ ,” he said now, a warning in his voice. 

I grinned, knowing I was about to win this argument by a landslide, pressing my finger to the mole on my chin. “And this? Gone.”

Joe cursed in Arabic, before placing a hand against his chest and saying, “ _Nicolò, stop, my old heart can’t bear it._ ”

“You know I’m right,” I said. 

“I know. I never even thought of that but – you’re right,” he said now, sighing and tilting his head back. He looked truly distressed and I couldn’t stop grinning. Then he used his fingers to lift my head up by my chin and place a soft kiss against the mole Michelangelo would have erased, like Joe had done so many thousands of times before.

“And then what would I have done?” he added now. “My God, I would have had to vandalize a church.” 

I snorted into his shoulder and he pulled me more tightly against him.

“It’s not vandalism if it’s art,” I said, “Especially if it’s _better_ art. You should have been the one commissioned and the only reason you weren’t is because Julius wouldn’t have let a Muslim man paint the chapel.”

“It may have also had something to do with me making sure no one important knew who I was,” he said now, wearing the same amused expression as before. 

“Immortality has robbed you of the recognition you deserve, _ya hayati_ ,” I said. 

He shrugged. “It’s not recognition I want.”

I bit my lip, only now letting myself think about the night ahead of us. It had been too long since Joe and I had a room of our own, with a lock on the door and a properly sized bed no less. Too long since we’d had a moment to relax, let alone rejoice in still being alive, and together. Not a day had gone by since Booker shot Andy that I didn’t think about Andy’s fate. 

I saw her looking at herself in the mirror more often, touching her face, examining her reflection as if she might be able to spot herself aging. Worse yet, I saw her lifting her shirt to examine her new scar each day, as it incrementally faded over the last month. I saw Joe, treating her like porcelain. Treating _Andromache the Scythian_ like porcelain. Eyeing her every move in the house, and especially while driving. Saw his eyes flit over to her seatbelt each time, too quickly and too subtly for anyone but me to notice. I even caught myself, hovering near her when travelling, holding my breath every time she so much as stubbed her toe or drank enough to get drunk – which took her much longer than any normal person and yet she’d been nearly as bad as Booker with her alcohol lately. Which hurt to watch, but also scared me half to death, because Booker had literally drunk himself to death more than once and Andy could too. 

All of this was ringing in the background of my thoughts at all times. That alone would be bad enough, but since learning she’d lost her immortality, I couldn’t stop thinking about Joe’s. Every night before bed, intrusive thoughts of Joe’s face when I had not yet resurrected from Keane’s gunfire in my mouth, clouded my head. At first, I couldn’t understand why, since I’d died and resurrected to see his face first thing so many times before. He always waited over my body like that for me to come back. Any time either of us could, any time either of us had lived while the other hadn’t, we tried to do this. But this time had been different. Joe knew the first thing that returned to us was our sight. That was why he leaned over me. So that I’d be able to see him the moment my life returned. But for the first time ever that I could remember, he was not looking back. Couldn’t look back. 

He was afraid my pupils wouldn’t dilate this time. He was afraid of that every time, just like I was afraid his wouldn’t. But this time was different. This time, he couldn’t even bear to look me in the eyes until I returned to myself. Learning about Andy’s immortality – it put things in perspective. For both of us. I had never imagined that we were capable of taking the other for granted. But we had been after all. At least, more than we were now. More than either of us could help to, now. 

And these days in Florence, nostalgia glowing at the edges of my vision for the many times we spent here over the years and Joe finally acting like himself again – I was aching for him with every atom of my being. In every possible way, I yearned to be close to him. Possessed by him. Overcome by him. 

I wouldn’t ever let myself take him for granted again. 

I cupped both sides of his face in my hand, and pressed my forehead against his. “ _If it’s not recognition you want, my love,_ ” I asked in Arabic, “ _What is?_ ” 

“ _You know what you haven’t done for me in a while?_ ” he asked now, his voice husky and his fingers curling in the collar of my shirt. 

I gazed into his eyes, my mouth going dry. “What is it?” I asked, hearing the desperation in my own voice already. 

He smiled coyly at me, and I knew he could ask me to do anything and I’d do it. I’d be doing it, before he finished his sentence even.

“Pose for me,” he said.

I blinked at him. “ _Hayati_ , you draw me every day.”

“Not while you’re posing for me,” he said, “Not like how I want to draw you, right now.”

My cheeks flared, and I tried to think back to the last time I undressed and posed for him. A year, maybe? More? It was so hard to remember. He usually just drew me however I happened to be. Often in the morning, or before bed, while laying down and sleeping, or reading or watching TV. Occasionally, in the bathtub, whenever I could afford to bathe and not shower. Which was not as often as I would like. 

Joe pulled me out of my reverie by kissing me, and saying, “ _If you do not want me to ogle you then –_ ” 

“ _There is nothing I don’t want you to do to me,_ ” I said, interrupting him and I could tell, my words had caught him off guard. They had caught me off guard too. But they were true. 

A grin slowly spread across his face. “Yeah?”

I wanted to ask him, if in our nine hundred years together, I had ever turned him down. If I had ever neglected to do something he wanted me to do, or let him do something he had wanted to do. If I had ever made him believe that I didn’t care about his desires or needs. Or that I didn’t desperately desire or need the same. If I had, I wanted to make up for it this instant. 

But first, what he desired from me now. 

I laced my fingers in his, kissed him, and then lead him into the bedroom we’d shared for two nights. Unlike tonight, the first night in this room we’d gone to bed early, and exhausted with jetlag, flying here from our last job in China which had lasted the better part of two weeks. And last night, we’d stayed up late with Nile and Andy. Joe and I showered together, like we often did, and summoned enough need to get each other off with our hands, but that was it. I was going through withdrawals from his skin, and had rushed things. I wouldn’t tonight. 

Joe sat down in a computer chair in front of a fold-out easel he travelled with. He pulled a sketchbook from his suitcase, too big for his backpack, and placed it on the easel before pulling his pencil case out from his backpack. When he was ready to draw, I sat down on the bed in front of him and began unbuttoning my shirt. I loved how I didn’t even need to embellish this act with any sort of seductive movements, and Joe’s eyes were already latched to my fingers, unhooking each button. I never had to try to be desirable to him, which, whenever I thought about it, only made me love him impossibly more. He wouldn’t have me changed even if God commanded me to. I read somewhere, that to love someone was to see them through the eyes of God. I often wondered if it wasn’t reversed in my case. If God hadn’t peered through Joe’s. 

I unbuckled my belt and undid my jeans just as unceremoniously, before slipping them off along with my briefs. Lastly I pulled my socks off and tossed them with the rest of my clothes into our laundry basket without looking. 

“How would you like me?” I asked then, and he swallowed thickly. 

“However you feel comfortable, _my heart_. I’ll want to draw it no matter what.”

So I lied on my back and tucked a pillow beneath my head along with one of my arms. The other rested on my naval. I kept one leg straight, the other bent and up, so that my hips angled toward him, giving him a proper view of all of me. 

Joe exhaled audibly, and a moment later he’d selected a pencil and I could hear it scratching across the paper. The sound was one of my favorites. Few other sounds I was as at home to as the sound of Joe sketching, and if I closed my eyes, I could travel back centuries in my head and visit thousands of moments in our lives, in which he was sketching while I did something else. 

I remembered the first time he sketched me. Or rather, the first time I was made _aware_ he was sketching me. It had been a year since we left the battlefields of the first crusade together. He and I had been travelling alone together so long, ironically, only feeling safe in each other’s company now that we’d abandoned the war.

We were barely even friends yet. Externally, at least, we acted more like acquaintances who tolerated each other’s company for the sake of making things easier, and not being alone. We’d both been dreaming of Andy and Quynh by that point, but finding them felt impossible and the only thing scarier than travelling with someone who killed you a dozen times, was facing the rest of eternity alone. We were also both still learning each other’s language, more every day, especially on his end, but nonetheless. Misunderstandings were too easy to come by. 

So we existed in the same space almost completely separate. Each of us each day practicing our faiths to the best of our abilities, and observing one another doing so. 

The first time I was aware I was falling for him was while he prayed. 

I had already been stunned with his commitment to his faith since our first few nights spent together in complete silence. Our sleep schedules were the same because we both had to wake up before the sun rose to pray, but he often woke up first, bathed, and then woke me up to join him. Then, for the rest of the day, while I prayed randomly, and internally, and often times only to beg forgiveness or demand answers from God as to why my life had taken this impossibly difficult path denying me access to Heaven despite fighting in the war that promised me a ticket – his prayers were –

Just breathtaking. Every time. Keeping silent, he would cleanse himself methodically beforehand with water, or sand if he had to, and then turn the direction he must face, knowing always where it was in a way I couldn’t fathom. All before finally commencing with motions I could make no sense of but knew nonetheless were predesigned and well-practiced. 

And his expression while he prayed – it was not, I knew without needing to see myself – an expression I wore while praying. Because when I prayed I felt anguished, and guilty, and resentful. I felt more consumed with hate and shame for myself than love for my God. 

But when Joe prayed he looked like he was experiencing the very peace I’d been denied by immortality. He looked completely at home, comfortable, happy even, during his ministrations. Watching him felt like travelling to a foreign land, but one I immediately wept upon seeing in relief such a place could exist. 

That was how I fell in love with him, watching him express love for his faith, the very faith I fought to destroy. 

At first, I couldn’t even admit to myself that this was why I watched him so closely five times a day for a year. It was easier for me to tell myself I envied his faith than admit to myself I loved him. But eventually, the way I watched him changed. Shifted, from watching him in a stunned, yet fascinated silence, to watching him filled with warmth, and my heart so tender with guilt and shame, gently caressed by the sight of him. He had always been beautiful to me. Always, since I first saw him off the battlefield, a sweet sight for my eyes used to bloodshed and death. But I knew by then that he’d become more than just an incessant reminder of my shameful preference for men’s bodies. 

And it was at this point in our lives, when I was realizing that I was falling for him, that on a day he spent most of sketching, he thoughtlessly left his art out by the fire after falling asleep, and I saw my own face so much more clearly than I ever before had in the surface of water or metal reflections. Because of this, I wasn’t even at first certain it was me. But I pressed the pads of my fingers to my nose and chin and brow, to feel the shapes I saw on the page. 

He’d spent the entire day drawing me. From memory too, since it wasn’t as though I had been sitting still the entire day. 

From that point on, I tried to pay attention to him as much as I could while he was drawing, and even talked to him about his artwork, when prior to that, the only conversations we had were either about our immediate travels and priorities, such as getting tired or needing to eat, or about our faiths, because we both loved to talk about our own and we were both, initially, perplexed by the other’s and later genuinely interested.

But after realizing he was drawing me, we could talk about other things. First his art, and when he first learned to draw. Then his poetry, and what kind of poetry he liked. Which led to him asking me if I read poetry, and since I never had, what I liked to do. I told him I enjoyed singing, but rarely did so. Naturally, that resulted in months of him begging me to sing, even promising me he’d recite his poetry for me if I did, an incredibly tempting offer to me at the time, though I still refused. 

Until I finally gave in, one night, when he woke from a nightmare about the Crusades. Not about his own death, but the death of one of his dear friends, and he looked so pained and defeated I started to sing without thinking. 

Sometimes I thought if I had never given in and sung to him, if I had never permitted myself to be vulnerable in front of him in a way I never had before in front of anyone else – I only ever sang alone – then we would have never become more than what we were. He would have never made good on his promise to recite poetry, which meant we would have never made a deal that I sing to him every night if he read to me after, which meant he would have never, one night while doing so weeks later, decided to read a poem he’d written about me, confessing his love for me. And I would have never kissed him afterward, as if breaking the surface of water and gasping for air, my body doing it for me, without out my permission or even acknowledging me, in order to save my life. We would have never been more than just two men both in love with the other, convinced the other hated him.

“Care to tell me what you’re thinking?” Joe asked now, and I flitted my eyes around the room, before looking at him and remembering where I was and who I was. 

“I was thinking about when I used to sing to you,” I said. 

Joe’s eyebrows furrowed. “’Used to’?” he asked, because I still did. Although, now I just sung whenever I felt like it even if he happened to be near enough to hear. And if he asked me to sing something specific, I would. 

“In the beginning,” I said, and understanding dawned him. 

“I think about that all the time,” he said, smiling and choosing a different pencil. “Some of the happiest memories I have. Are you getting uncomfortable?”

I shake my head at him. “Keep going, if you want.”

He nodded and then selected a different pencil to continue drawing with. The scratching noises resumed and I closed my eyes again, so that I could keep daydreaming about those early times with Joe. 

Despite having kissed – and from that point on kissing more than we breathed – and now sleeping together, my back pressed against his chest and his arm wrapped around me, little else changed for a long time. We talked more comfortably, and openly. We wanted to know everything about the other. We flirted, constantly. I remember my face hurting from smiling so much for so long. Months it seemed, my cheeks were sore from smiling and my lips raw from kissing. 

But neither of us attempted anything more. In part, I thought now, because we were both happy to let things happen slowly. Overwhelmed by and wanting to savor an experience neither of us had had before – being in a relationship, not kissing. I’d kissed men before and so had he. Though neither of us knew that about the other yet.

Which was the other reason why neither of us pushed things. I knew by then he wasn’t allowed to be immodest in front of anyone that wasn’t a wife. He knew by then I wasn’t allowed to be immodest in front of _anybody_. For months neither of us realized the other had already broken these rules and was more than willing to again. Desperate to, even. And neither of us wanted to disrespect the other’s faith, which was funny to think about now, considering we’d met by killing each other over religious differences. 

But one day we came across a pond in the hills above a town we left earlier that day because the locals were paying a little too much attention to us. We fell asleep moments after making camp, even though it was still early in the day, because the hike had been exhausting. The next morning, I woke up earlier than usual, and for the first time on my own since leaving with Joe. Always, I woke to him nudging me awake for prayer. 

But this morning, I woke to the sight of Joe treading out into the pond, completely undressed. He reached the other side, where a narrow waterfall sloped off the ledge from the cliff side above. He stood under the water, cleansing his body and hair like he always had, only this time I was seeing it.

Immediately, I was consumed by guilt. Both guilt for looking at him and taking too long to tear my eyes away, and the other guilt, the familiar guilt, the guilt I’d felt for as long as I could remember. The guilt of his naked body affecting me the way it was – and oh, it _was_ , I was achingly hard even as I turned away from the sight of water rolling off his shoulders and chest and stomach and cock – not nearly as visible as I wanted it to be, in the moonlight. 

It was because of this guilt I so rarely gave in to touching myself – and especially since travelling with him, both of us always in each other’s company and initially, not the least bit comfortable with it either. Actually, I _hadn’t_ touched myself since before the war. And other than the occasional dream, which had transitioned over time from being about faceless and nameless men with white skin, to being about him, always him and his tender eyes and sculpted body so sure and comforting around me before bed – I’d had no release in years. 

He found me minutes later, sitting up against a tree, hugging my knees to my chest and clutching my rosary in a white-knuckled grip. It only took him a second to figure out what had happened. He placed one of his hands over mine and the rosary. When he spoke, it startled me, because he didn’t normally speak between purifying himself and praying. Over the months, he’d gone from nudging me awake and immediately walking away, to waking me by caressing my face, or threading his fingers through my hair, or kissing my forehead. 

He said in Genoese, “ _Nicolò? How long have you been awake?_ ” 

I didn’t respond, but I could sense him looking me up and down, before looking over his shoulder at the waterfall he’d just bathed under. 

“ _You saw me?_ ” 

I nodded. 

“ _Oh,_ ” he said, and huffed out a laugh. I’d whipped my head in his direction as he crouched down next to me. “ _You don’t have to feel bad, my heart. I don’t mind if you look._ ” 

I still couldn’t say anything, and so he asked, “ _Or are you afraid…? It wasn’t on purpose, right? What kind of God wouldn’t forgive that?_ ”

“ _It’s not that,_ ” I said.

“ _Then what –_ ” he began, but cut himself off the moment I let go of my legs, and stretched them out before me, revealing how painfully erect I still was. 

He said something in his language I didn’t yet know, presumably a curse of some kind, and then he pulled my hand into his, and detangled my rosary from my fingers. He placed it on top of my folded day clothes, just a few feet away from us. 

After, he tilted my head toward him and kissed me, chastely, but full of want. I felt his hand on my thigh, and the stroke of his thumb so close to where I wanted it. 

“ _May I touch you?_ ” he asked, under his breath. 

My eyes widened. “ _You want to?_ ”

“ _More than I’ve ever wanted anything else_.” 

“ _But what about –_?”

“ _I can’t – I know I can’t stop myself from wanting you even if I try, so I won’t. If I’m punished for this when I die,_ if _I die – I don’t believe I –_ we _will be, but if we are, then it is worth it._ ” He shrugged.

When I didn’t respond right away, he said, “ _Unless you don’t –_ ”

But I was already kissing him, trying to lie down and pull him on top of me at once. We didn’t even undress, didn’t even use our hands. We barely situated our clothing enough to expose ourselves, and then it was just carnal rutting against one another, me clawing into his back and shoulders, him sucking on my earlobe and throat, me whimpering and covering my mouth, and him pulling my hand away, and kissing it, so that he could hear me and look at my face when I succumbed, seconds after starting.

“ _Dio Mio,_ ” I heard now, and jolted as Joe rested his hand on my hip and kissed the head of my cock where my foreskin left it exposed. This made me moan and curl my fingers in his hair. 

I glanced up at his easel, and realized he hadn’t even closed his pencil case or flipped the cover of his sketchbook back over his drawing. 

“Are you done?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. 

He shook his head. “You started to get hard and I couldn’t resist you. What were you thinking about?”

“You,” I said. “Always you.”

Joe sat on the end of the bed. With one hand he repositioned my legs further apart, and I eased more fully onto my back, lacing my fingers behind my head. His hands trailed up my thighs and over my hip bones. He leaned over me, placing a kiss against the soft skin at the dip of my hipbone, and sucking a mark into it with his teeth. By the time he pulled away, the mark had vanished. Then he did the same to the inside of my thigh and I sighed. My length throbbed at the sensation. 

“Is it your goal to make me beg?” I asked, cracking a smile at him. 

He smiled back. “As much as I’d love that, I don’t think I can hold back much longer, _Cuore_.”

I opened my mouth to respond but didn’t get the chance to. Joe had taken me into his mouth and I couldn’t formulate words. Could barely remember how to breathe without gasping. He knew my body better than anyone had ever known anyone else’s. I felt like I was sculpted by his own hands, the way his touch made me feel. It was worship. There was no other way to describe the slow and sweet slip of his tongue under my foreskin so that he could lick the underside of the head and make me wet. I curled my fists in the sheets, resisting the urge to thrust into his mouth, even as he dipped his head as low as he could go. I trusted him to get me there exactly when he wanted me to.

Once I truly was about to beg, Joe pulled off of me to dig in his suitcase for lube. I exhaled, both in relief and in distress. I turned my head to watch him, and every second while he searched for it dragged. When he found it, he tossed it to me before pulling his shirt off and sitting on the bed to kick his sweatpants and boxers off. I sat up long enough to pull him by his nape into a deep and hungry kiss.

He eased me on to my back and once again positioned my legs so that he had proper access. I handed him the lube and he slicked up his fingers in a practiced way. He kissed me, and kept kissing me as he eased the first finger in, slow like I needed, but not like I wanted. 

“ _How do you want me?_ ” I asked, against his ear, in Arabic. He pulled out the first finger, and when he pressed in again, it was with two. My eyes flitted shut for a moment, and my hips squirmed, almost involuntarily. It’d been too long and my body yearned for this like it yearned for air. 

“ _Why ask? You know my answer. Every way, my heart_ ,” he said. His fingers took a memorized rhythm and pressure, a knowing pace that made my eyes roll back. I moaned into his mouth and then kissed him, more desperately than he could keep up with, or maybe he chose not to – maybe he chose to keep me hungrily biting and sucking at his lips and clutching onto his hair. 

“ _I don’t think there are enough hours in the night for you to have me every way,_ ” I breathed. 

This time it was his lips pressed against my ear. “ _Not enough hours in a lifetime._ ”

I cursed and said, “ _Take me, take me, I’m ready, Yusuf, please_.”

“ _How do_ you _want me, my heart_?” he asked. 

“ _I don’t fucking care, just do it,_ ” I growled and he laughed, but obeyed, turning me onto my stomach and hitching my hips back all at once, knowing, I was sure, that I had become desperate enough to want him to be rough, and this was the best position for that. 

He took another infuriatingly long moment to get on his knees and lube himself up, and as he did so he bent his head down. I sucked in a breath when I felt his teeth sink into my ass and moaned, wishing for the ten thousandth time I wouldn’t heal immediately when he left marks on me. A moment later I felt him press against me, and just as soon leaned back against him.

“ _Easy, my love_ ,” he said, knowing that I would hurt myself if I did it too quickly and not care. 

Then he sunk into me, slowly bottoming out and it lured another torturous moan from me. He let me adjust for a second, bending over to kiss along my spine. Then his hands, firm and gentle at the same time, familiar as home, clasped on to my hips and I bit my lip in anticipation. 

When he started thrusting it was controlled and soft and so fucking sweet. Joe cursed as his hands pulled me back by my hips onto him and I moaned each time he sunk his cock back into me. I held off riding back onto him as long as I could, trying my best to let the pleasure swelling inside me linger, but eventually I gave in, and when I did, so did Joe. He moaned my name, and started praising me in Arabic like he always did, like he couldn’t help but do. Telling me how beautiful I looked, how good I felt, how he longed to unravel me like this every night for the rest of our lives. 

I twisted around enough so that I could kiss him and his lips were already waiting to greet mine. I kissed him, with more tongue and breath and moans than before, and my fingers still curling into his hair, keeping me grounded in the moment. 

“ _Harder_ ,” I demanded. “ _End me_.” 

He cursed and moaned my name, pulling out of me. Before I could protest, he’d flipped me onto my back, placed both my ankles on his shoulders and slipped himself back inside of me, all in one fluid motion. 

I grinned when he returned his attention to me, cupping my face in one of his hands, and using the other to hang on to the headboard, keeping him balanced as he began slamming into me with a force that could have knocked the wind out of me. I curled my fingers in his hair again, pressing my forehead against his and closing my eyes. There was nothing I could do now. My legs were trembling and my toes were curling and with each slam of his cock into me the pleasure rose.

“ _Nicolò, I’m close, my heart. Do you need my hand?_ ” he asked.

I shook my head. “ _You’re enough. I’m right there. Make me come_.” 

And then he hooked an arm under the small of my back, lifting me up and changing the angle of his thrusts to exactly where he knew I needed his cock most. I gasped against his ear, and dug my nails into his back, incoherently pleading and moaning his name. He was doing the same, encouraging me and cursing and sucking at the soft skin of my neck. 

Finally, he thrust just right and my back lifted off the bed as I tossed my head back, his name escaping from my throat as I was pushed over that warm and golden precipice I’d been hovering on. My body went numb head to toe and I felt like I was floating outside my body, my conscience barely lingering as Joe tucked his face into the crook of my neck, wrapped his arms around me in a vice grip, and buckled seconds later on top of me, uttering mine and God’s name together. 

We laid together long enough for the sweat on our skin to go cold and for goosebumps to rise on my arms and his back. I combed my fingers through his hair for a while, before he lifted his head to grin at me, his eyes shaped like crescents. He kissed me warmly and I felt as overcome with affection for him as I did in those early days. 

Joe pulled out, and I mourned the loss. I would have happily fallen asleep just like that, but I knew we both needed to shower. 

“How loud do you think we were?” I asked, now that I was more human than animal again. 

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’d be shocked if Nile wasn’t wearing her headphones.”

I nodded, because I’d noticed she fell asleep wearing them sometimes too. I hoped Joe was right. I also hoped that was something she’d do regardless, and not specifically on our behalf. 

“And Andy?” I said, though without as much concern in my voice. 

Joe shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time she heard us if she did.”

Though I didn’t like the idea, I knew Joe was right. And this time, it was without the burden of knowing that Booker might have heard too. Joe and I had held back our displays of affection so much since his wife died, knowing he was hurting and yet not knowing the best way to help. Andy, on the other hand, didn’t hurt when Joe and I were affectionate together. And the most hearing us having sex would do was mildly annoy her. Which, I actually found quite funny. It reminded me of the old days with Quynh, when Joe and I could just as easily poke fun at them for being loud in the bedroom. I knew Andy wouldn’t hold anything against us, if only because she’d been in our position before too, and ten thousand more times. 

As often as she would tell Nile that she should sleep whenever she could, she would tell us to have a quickie if we could. She more than anybody understood what it meant not to take something for granted. 

“Join me?” Joe asked, as he stood up from the bed and headed toward the bathroom. I followed closely behind. 

In the shower he spent more time holding me close and cradling my face than he did washing himself off. 

I found myself thinking of our early days together again, and that first touch, and how afterward, I had begun hysterically praying, thinking this had been my worst offense out of all the times I’d given in with men, because he was not just supposed to be my enemy, but I knew my love for him exceeded my love for God. I didn’t touch or talk to Joe for three days following that, and it was only because of his patience and understanding that my guilt hadn’t broken us. 

“ _I love you, Nicolò,_ ” he’d said to me on the third day, sitting down beside me, but without touching me. “ _That isn’t something I can help. So tell me, how could I love you if it isn’t my free will and it also isn’t meant to be?_ ” 

I’d collapsed against his chest, crying, and he held me for hours I thought, until I could finally stop. 

Every day following that day for years, whenever I felt a moment of doubt, I would tell myself: _we are meant to love each other, or we wouldn’t_. 

Now, nine hundred years later, with Yusuf’s arms wrapped around my waist and his head tucked against my neck, I smiled. There was no guilt, or shame, or pain anymore. There never would be again. 

I started to sing. 

… 

The next morning, I was in the kitchen preparing breakfast for everyone. Andy was still asleep, and Joe was in another room, getting Dhuhr in early today, so that he wouldn’t have to stop somewhere along our way to Rome, or at the very crowded and very Catholic Vatican. Though I didn’t care if it bothered others, I knew it probably would, and he didn’t need that kind of attention while trying to peacefully pray. 

Nile strolled into the kitchen and hopped up on the counter. Despite the heat, she had on a pair of jeans and a blouse that covered her shoulders, just like I told her she’d have to do. Women couldn’t enter the chapel without covering their knees and shoulders. 

“Do you have a bottle of some kind?” I asked. 

“What kind of bottle?” she asked. 

“Just something small. Everyone gets holy water in the chapel while they’re there,” I said. 

“For real?” she asked. “Well, shit. I’ll try to find something I guess.” 

I nodded. “If you don’t want to bother with it, though, I can give you one of mine. I got some the last time I was there. I’m sure you’d be the only person alive with hundred-year old Vatican holy water.”

She laughed, and then all at once, her expression changed and she said, “That reminds me! I have something to show you.”

I flipped two of the eggs I was frying before turning my head to glance her way. 

She lifted up the screen of her phone to me and pointed at a portrait of someone. “Is that you?”

I furrowed my eyebrows and took the phone from her to get a closer look. The person depicted had the same haircut I wore during the renaissance. Their eyes were pale green, and deeply set, with long creases underneath them that no good night’s sleep could erase. The lips were soft and rounded and full, with a prominent cupid’s bow. The jaw square, but not sharp. And yet, the nose – narrow and straight and short. Proportional to the rest of the face. The skin, crystal clear, of course. No mark on the chin. And all on a chiseled body that didn’t remotely resemble my own. 

“Dear Christ,” I said, and looked Nile in the face. 

“It _is_!” she shrieked. “I knew it!”

“Is this on the ceiling?” I asked. 

Nile nodded. “Took me forever to find it. It’s not perfect but it’s damn close.”

“No it _is_ perfect,” I spit. “That’s the point. It’s me, but perfected. My god, that little shit.”

Nile laughed as I handed the phone back to her. 

“I’ll show you where it is exactly when we get there today,” she said, “It’s right by –”

“You will _not_ ,” I said, cutting her off so fiercely her eyebrows shot up. “Joe _cannot_ see this, okay? He _cannot_ find out about this.”

She blinked at me. “Okay, but why?”

“I don’t want him to get arrested,” I said, and returned my attention to the eggs, ignoring Nile’s confused expression.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious, my tumblr URL is kill-your-authors@tumblr.com.


End file.
